Convert your original design into a Microsoft Word letterhead template

At the end of a letterhead design project, it’s pretty common to hear your client say: “I want this as an editable letterhead template in Microsoft Word.” They usually don’t own or know how to use advanced graphics-editing programs like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop, and it simply doesn’t make sense for them to purchase those expensive programs.

Microsoft Word is pretty low-tech compared to Illustrator or InDesign; however, that’s what your clients are using and your letterhead design is useless to them if they can’t edit and add content to it, so knowing how to create a Microsoft Word letterhead template is key. Let’s get started.

1. Create your letterhead design

We’ve created this example in Illustrator, but Photoshop and InDesign can be used to create letterhead designs too. We’re using a full bleed design in this example with a 1/8″ bleed, which will give s us a document that is about 8.63 x 11.13 inches.

Create your design in CMYK color mode, and if you’re using photos or complex graphics make sure that they 300ppi or higher, because Microsoft Word compresses all images that you place into it. There’s a great full-bleed letterhead template that you can download here.

2. Export your letterhead design as a high res PNG file

To do this, click File > Export > PNG. Make sure you select 300 ppi as the resolution. You can also save your design as a JPG and even as a TIFF; however TIFF files will dramatically increase files size and loading times in Microsoft Word for your client.

3. Set up your Microsoft Word document

Next, set up a Word document to insert your letterhead design into. Click File > New Blank Document. While the document opens, click File > Page Setup > Paper Size > Manage Custom Sizes. Set the paper size to 8.75 x 11.13 to accommodate your full bleed design, set all the margins to “0”, and set the Non-Printable Areas to “User Defined.” Doing this lets you set up your letterhead as a full bleed instead of conforming to Word’s default margins.

4. Place your letterhead design into your Microsoft Word document

Your letterhead design is going to be placed into the Header and Footer section of your Word document, which will automatically repeat on all additional pages. Go to View > Header and Footer. Now some guidelines for headers and footers will show up on the document. Click Insert > Photo > Picture from File. Select your PNG file. Now your .png file will appear centered in the middle of the page. Select the png image, click Format > Picture.

A “Format Picture” menu will pop up. First, go to Size.Word automatically scales down your artwork, but you can fix that by setting the height and width to 100%.

Next, click on the Layout tab, and select the “Behind the text” option. Click the “Advanced” button and make sure the Horizontal and Vertical Absolute positions are set to Page. Now hit ok to apply all these picture formatting adjustments. Your letterhead design should now appear at 100%. Adjust the positioning if needed.

Go to View, and uncheck Header and Footer so that you can leave the Header and Footer area and start editing your text area. Now that you’re not in header and footer editing mode the letterhead design will appear to be faded, but it won’t actually print that way so let your client know that. Adjust your margins and paragraph styles as desired. If you hit return until word creates a new page for you, you’ll notice that the same design has appeared on the next page. This is because you inserted your design into the header and footer section of the document, and the design will automatically repeat on every additional page.

5. Save it as a template

6. Prepare the Microsoft Word letterhead template for printing

If your client is printing the Microsoft Word letterhead template at a printer who is able to print full-bleed pages, tell your client to save the finished file as a PDF file for better printing results. Printing directly from a Microsoft Word document can have mixed results. To save the template as a PDF, go to File > Print > Save to PDF. Now the file is ready to print 🙂

It’s important to let your client know the colors in your Microsoft Word letterhead template will display the colors slightly differently than the original design. In creating the template, the trick is to get its colors as close to the original design as possible – they simply won’t display the exact same way no matter what, and are bound to look different when printed. On the chance that your client has Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, you should recommend they edit their letterheads in those programs instead because the print quality will be higher than in Microsoft Word.

Additionally, if the design is full bleed and your client wants it as a Microsoft Word letterhead template, make sure to inform them that it cannot be printed properly on a typical home or office printer, as this will result in a white margin around the edges. They need to take the full-bleed design to a professional printer who can print full-bleed designs.

Microsoft Word has a lot of disadvantages and is simply not on par with other more advanced graphics-editing programs, but it’s likely what your clients know and you have to work with that.

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The author

Rebecca was born and raised in the Bay Area, where she currently lives. She has a BFA in Design with a Visual Communications emphasis from UC Davis. Her passions include travel, design, pasta, and hanging out with her Beagle, Spud.

Don’t delete the header and footer. That’s where the letterhead image is. Just “close” it so it stays out of the way behind your letter.

Aim80

Feb 17 2014

Did anyone else’s PDFs come out pixilated? I followed the directions, the Word doc works perfect, and looks high res, but then when saving as PDF (with ALL options tried) the header or png file (and it happens for every type of header file I’ve created; jpg, eps, wmf, png) the header looks super pixilated..

Hi, my letterhead design is pixelated. Looks ok on screen, but I print it out its definitely below average quality. I even tried to make the PNG bigger than A4, at the same ratio, so when scaled down would hopefully retain more quality, but that hasn’t worked. How can I get a nice, crisp letterhead image in the background?

Hi All, I’m a fool. I didn’t follow Rebecca’s steps correctly. Don’t do what I did – I saved the PNG via ‘save for web and devices’ instead of ‘file – export’. The latter lets you choose the PPI, as the article mentions. Awesome tutorial, works perfectly, and even prints perfectly!

Allison Crossbow

Feb 17 2014

Hi this is very helpful tutorial for converting original design into a Microsoft word letterhead template.

Good article. I would like to add couple more to letterhead. How I can do following :

1- I want to add logo as water mark center of the letter head.
2- Also on 2nd page I want the logo to be small and without the contact details because I don’t want to be repeat the contact details on every page ? Any solution for this ?

Create a new Word document by clicking New on the Standard toolbar.
Insert two page breaks by pressing CTRL+ENTER twice. This creates a three-page document.
Position the insertion point on page one by pressing CTRL+HOME.
On the View menu, click Header and Footer.
Click Page Setup on the Header and Footer toolbar.
Select the Layout tab.
Select the Different odd and even and Different first page check boxes. In the Section start list, select New page, and then click OK.

I find it an outrage to find a tutorial that is made for MAC and that doesn’t say so in the header. This misleads people to click in the link and seeing the tutorial for this god forsaken restrictive OS.

Now you know how MAC users feel as most people just assume your using that incredibly unstable and security flawed Windows OS…

Denese

Feb 17 2014

Excellent post and thank you for the great
information and tips.

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Hi, thanks for the tutorial. I’ve got a problem when saving the template as a pdf. It excludes a the bottom past of the design and doesn’t show in the pdf while it does show in the word file. Is there someone with a solution?

Dear Admin; I can’t even begin! Where do I trace this menu “File > Export > PNG” ? I am using Microsoft Office 2010 and on designing my template on MS Publisher I can’t get the export thing! Help kindly.

This was such a helpful tute! Thanks SO much. After 3x trying (my mistakes of not following instructions *and working on a pc*) my results are EXACTLY what I was looking for!! Thanks again ♥
*Below is how it turned out*
~ The unPerfect Momhttp://www.SoTotallyLoved.org

Is this for a normal 8.5 x 11 paper size? Large just for the full bleed effect? Can anyone answer this? If my design doesn’t really need bleeds do i still need to create the document size to a larger format?

Hi there, awesome tutorial. Thank you. Really helpful to get high quality. Just a question (to anyone). I’m working with Word 2013, and I CAN set a left and right indent for my text, but i CAN’T adjust the vertical text for it to start lower on the page (Under the png and logo) without the entire png image shifting down with it.

I’ve been adjusting where my text goes using the margins (all four). You might check to make sure you’re setting your image inside the header/footer section and then setting it to 100% along with setting those header/footer margins at 0 relative to “page.” Check the directions really carefully. It’s a different set of margins.

Mona

Feb 17 2014

OH thank goodness! I tried converting from PDF to Word and it looks distorted and terrible. This method works like a charm!! For any who are having trouble, remember you’re putting this image in the background inside the header, and follow Rebecca’s instructions exactly.

This is fantastic! Thanks so much. Quick question: If I’m designing a letterhead (without a full bleed) for a client who will be printing with Word in house, is there a recommendation for how much “margin” or gripper edge should I allow for on the top and bottom? ie. How far should the address, website, etc. be from the bottom of the page? Thanks for your help, Rebecca (or anyone)!

*I’ve usually thought .25 inch was pretty standard, but it seems Word suggests that .6 inch from the bottom will be cut off.

Now here’s something that has always annoyed me (which… doesn’t annoy me anymore, because I just figured out Googled a fix)…

Whenever I have formatted an ebook in Word, I’ve always had a problem with the borders when I save to PDF. For instance, I’ll have a nice beautiful ebook cover that will appear to be edge-to-edge in Word, but when I save to PDF, I get a super ugly white border around the edge. (That’s the non-printable area, BTW. It’s where your typical home printer just can’t put ink.)

HOWEVER, when I’m developing an ebook, most people will view it online, so I want the pretty appearance of a bleed. Here’s how you fix it (in Word 2010… I’m sure it’s similar for the Windows version).

Select File > Page Setup

In the Paper Size dropdown menu, chose Manage Custom Sizes

Click on the “+” sign and type a descriptive name, like “Edge to edge”

Sadly, most of my clients and probably lots of other people’s, want recipients of the letter to view it online in its full glory, not the washed out header/footer. Most won’t print it out so seeing it as it should look on their computer is important. I know a pdf is the way to go but my clients just don’t want to be bothered and after 30 years as a designer I know its a loosing battle to argue with them. I wish Microsoft would get rid of the faded header/footer and solve that problem.

Great tutorial but I just have to offer a bit of advice for people using Word 2013 on Microsoft operating systems. I had problems trying to fit the header and footer of the template within the confines of the header and footer section in word without the template actually being pushed down the page! The template would fly off the grid and would seriously drive me bonkers. In order to prevent such madness read on:

After fitting your template fully on the page go to “Insert” then click Header. After clicking Header go down and you’ll see a “Save Selection to Header Gallery…”, click on it, then word will automatically recognize the header of your template as a header and save it in the header gallery. Repeat the process also for the footer. After that you can easily tweak the header and footer borders by entering numbers in the “Header From Top” and “Footer From Bottom” boxes without your template actually shifting off from the page.

Also format issues, be sure to save your file as a “dotx” file, which is the latest Microsoft office template file, “dot” formats are mostly used for fixing compatibility issues when you want to use your template in older version of Office. Now open a new file and you can easily spot your template in the “Personal” section beside “Featured”. If it’s not there then open File, Options, on the left section there is a series of options, go to Save. After clicking on save on the right you’ll see a series of options to the right. Check and see whether the “Default personal templates location” field is empty. If it’s empty then enter the location of where you keep your template files, on Microsoft OS it’s mostly saved in the Libraries—>Documents—->Custom Office Templates section by default. Enter the address in the empty field then click OK. Close word and run it again, this time you should see your template ready in the “Personal” section.

Great article! Does anyone know how to change color of the imported graphic in word? I want to create a letterhead format that is completely editable in MS WORD. I know that you can’t change color of the imported graphics as they either png or jpeg. Can someone please help me with what format is needed in Word to be able change the graphic color?

For the best results, it’s much better practice to work with the native inDesign file for any changes to the image.

Jennifer

Feb 17 2014

Great tutorial. It was a little hard for me to follow exact instructions since I was using Windows and MS Word 2010 so things were not in the same place as you mentioned, but it still was very helpful. Thank you!

Thank you so much for the super helpful topic!!
Although, I got everything to work, but when I go to print, and save, the background letter head I I’mported, does not show up in the preview at all, and it doesn’t print. Can anyone help me out? Thank you!

CMYK PNG file probs:
Thanks for the tutorial, much appreciated. However, is anyone else having an issue with PNG not supporting CMYK? I can’t save a CMYK PNG from InDesign, nor can I open a CMYK in Photoshop and then save bits of it as CMYK PNGs.

I presume that we need to be making a Word Letterhead Template with CMYK images in it, no? Or is RGB good enough for in-house/office printing?